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Yahoo Blocks Venerable Email List Over False Positives
RomulusNR writes "Yahoo has stopped delivering This Is True, Randy Cassingham's 14-year-old mailing list, because too many Yahoo readers have mistakenly or carelessly flagged it as spam. Yahoo readers make up over 10% of True's readership, slashing the ad revenue that keeps it going. And Yahoo doesn't negotiate with spammers. As Randy describes it: 'The yahoos... ask to be put on True's distribution, then confirm that request, and... then click the "This is Spam" button when they don't recognize the mailing or simply don't want it anymore. Yes, those yahoos have screwed thousands upon thousands of others who really do want my newsletter. Too bad: Yahoo is listening to the yahoos instead: they're blocking it. To them, we're "spammers" and no protestations from "spammers" count.' The irony is that This is True is one of the first profitable mailing lists, predating Yahoo! Mail by almost three years."
I'm all the time clicking "this is spam" on stuff that Yahoo sends to my yahoo account, but I still get it. What's up with that?
The person being hurt is the mailing list owner, who isn't a customer of Yahoo. The Yahoo subscribers, who marked it as spam will be quite happy, they're no longer receiving this email they forgot subscribing to. The remaining Yahoo subscribers may or may not notice they ceased receiving it. Many will assume that the mailing list has closed all together.
So I don't see any market pressure to force Yahoo's hand. Other than what little publicity the mailing list owner can generate.
Is this true?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
the REAL story here is ... "How do I poison the yahoo spam list to ignore email from large, legitimate companies?" ... because it seems to be working well by accident. Maybe someone could monetize this? (Of course, that makes it a denial of service attack, and probably not legal... but...)
For things like True, it's perfect. It's what RSS was designed to do. True is not a mailing list like users@httpd is -- it's a bulk mailing, plain and simple.
I wonder if the author even tried to contact Yahoo. Some of my messages were being flagged as spam, I contacted Yahoo, and got a very easy tip on making sure my headers are all correct on outbound mail. I'm no longer flagged as spam via Yahoo. That was a year or so ago, though.
When we start blocking legitimate email, the spammers win.
Not sure why you are marked "off topic".. What you say is true from a receivers point of view.. What I would do if I was the sender though, is create a little informative email telling the Yahoo users what the deal is, and recommending that if they wish to continue getting the newsletter that they new a new email provider.. and then send to the Yahoovians using a different email address.. for irony, maybe even use Yahoo to send it.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Or so wikipedia claims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_is_True
Do you have any idea how utterly small that is? I'm surprised they can pay their bills with a list that small--even with a fraction of those being paid subscribers.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Umm... no.
I get a lot "to unsubscribe, mail to blah@blub..." spam. The reason is simple, when you do unsubscribe from the spam list, they know it's a valid and still active mail address.
You have no idea how much that increases your value as a spam target!
So when spamfilters automatically write to some unsub address instead of flagging something as spam, be prepared to be flooded with spam.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When somebody subscribes to one of my mailing lists, and confirms, we need a token from the mailbox provider which, when included on an incoming email means that the email is NEVER spam. Spam reports get converted into unsubscribe requests.
But there's no standard for this.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Spam filtering is a problem for all mailing lists. Simple solution: use newsfeeds instead.
.
Why can gmail (my new free email provider) do such a better job than Yahoo did?
A valid point. However, from personal experience I can tell you that when [place name of any webmail service] users no long get the mail they expect, they don't blame said webmail service - they blame the company or person that *should* have sent the mail. Because we all know that mail *always* gets through and that Yahoo, Hotmail, Google et al *always* work as they should.
The problem is compounded by the fact that answering angry support mail from users demanding to get their newsletter might be impossible, because that too may be blocked.
So while I agree with you that this could be solved by getting the webmail user to shift over to a new provider, the user may never be aware that the mail provider is the problem.
I guess solving the spam problems is not an easy task :-)
Huh? It's an OPT IN MAILING LIST, with a very deliberate signup process, you can't inadvertently or accidentally sign up. You have an interesting definition of what spam is, well not so much interesting as stupid.
most of them think it's a way of unsubscribing from a list.
Causes blacklisting for domains and hosting companies. I had a guy who forwarded his email address to an external address, then clicked on "This is spam" for every message. My IP was in the header so I got blacklisted. I had to scare the shit out of him to get him to stop "now that I've warned you, if you continue, I'll sue and take your house." Needless to say the customer did not renew, saved me the trouble of TOSsing him.
Isn't Yahoo in an ideal position to make this sort of probing useless? Just redirect all non-existent traffic with an unsubscribe header to a daemon that requests to be unsubscribed... then if you keep getting mail, you either ignore it or you use it, since you have the largest pool of honeypot email addresses on the planet.
Likewise they could in theory hit unsubscribe on behalf of their customers and then grab the resultant traffic. Of course, this is more open to attack, as the attacker can just switch email addresses. But if you're also unsubscribing all non-existent traffic, I'd say this will actually begin to get a lot more expensive for the would-be spammer than Yahoo, and the spammer would just stop trying to brute-force Yahoo.
Those systems have more spammers than nonspammers signed up to them. It simply doesn't work... in fact some of them (the one that use haikus for example) they became a near 100% perfect spam detector.
I gave up on Yahoo several months ago after an unknown person hijacked my account and changed the password. I don't log in from other computers, I only log in from the Mac in my bedroom, so it's not like I was creating a risk. I was paying Yahoo for a personalized "business" email address, yet it took three hours of phone calls, several emails and over three days to get them to turn my account back over to me. At one point, they told me they could not verify my identity with my name, phone number, mailing address and the credit card number they were billing. They said they couldn't unlock the account without me telling them what my security question was (which I chose 10 years ago), and the answer to that question. I told them, "that's not how security questions work. You ask me the security question and unlock my account when I provide the correct answer." When I finally did get back into my account, I discovered the hijacker had been contacting women through Yahoo personals posing as me, and in some cases telling them to "reply to my other Yahoo address." There were a few different addresses he was pointing people to. I notified Yahoo about this and asked them to investigate the fraud, and they told me it wasn't a priority for them. I migrated everything important to Google, and called Yahoo to cancel my account and transfer my personalized domain, but after hours of waiting on the phone, again, and again, they tell me they don't have the ability to release my domain. It's like dealing with a car salesman. As the company fails, it resorts to shadier practices to hold onto what it has, like AOL before it.
An unsubscribe process takes more clicks then hitting 'mark as spam'. That's all the reason people need to use the spam button. Can you honestly say you've never done it?
Um, yes, actually. I'm kind of shocked that you even consider it a valid option. Does it not occur to you that this has the potential to impact other people, too? I mean, I can be as lazy as the next person sometimes, but how hard is a couple fucking clicks of a mouse?
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
I wish we had some widespread way of verifying a mailing list subscription, or cessation thereof.
Don't RSS feeds accomplish this because people can subscribe and unsubscribe at will? I'm on the mailing list of several missionaries from my church but would much prefer them to just open a blog and let me subscribe via RSS instead of sending me emails. Easier for me (fewer emails to check), easier for them (no need to maintain a large database of contacts & email addresses, many of which are probably out of date.) With RSS feeds, nothing is ever out of date and you can be sure everyone that is supposed to be getting your content actually is getting your content. I guess the only disadvantage of RSS feeds is that one has to be reasonably technologically savvy to even know what they are, let alone use them.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
If you're a competitor to said company, it could well make you a profit.
As someone who's been on Randy's list for 10+ years, I can tell you it's easier to remove yourself from his list than anything else. It's literally just one click to unsubscribe.
In fact, it's easier to get off his list than it is to get on.
Some people do pay for the upgraded "Premium" This is True, and those people are not getting a paid-for-service.
What if yahoo decided that announcements from /. were spam? What if you were a subscriber?
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Bulk mail is still spam, even if it's "wanted"
Actually, no it isn't. Unsolicited mail is spam, a mailing list you consciously signed up for isn't. Just because you're too lazy to properly unsubscribe and thus reach for the 'This Is Spam' button to make it disappear doesn't make it spam.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
I want my spam filter to be accurate. I would not mark something "spam" if it were not actually spam - and certainly not if it were from a mailing list I deliberately subscribed to.
That's a terrible idea, and the fact that people do it irritates me. I'm sure it's the reason Google's spam filter is not as accurate as it used to be.
I have no problem doing this at home, where the only account that it affects is my own. It's useful, for example, to avoid those mailing lists that people who know you inevitably put you on -- you know, the "Random link I found" list, the "Same Goddamned Joke I Just Got From Everyone Else, And Wasn't That Funny Last Year, Either" list, the "Upcoming Torah Services At Your Synagogue" list, the "Yet Another Attempt To Unsubscribe By Spamming The Whole Fucking Mailing List" crap, etc.
That is, not actually spam, because they actually know me, and must think I want to receive this stuff. But it's often easier to simply mark it as spam than to have to explain myself.
And I know that with my own filter, it will actually learn based on content -- so I won't get the Same Goddamned Joke, but I will get things I care about from the same person.
However, at work, we're on Gmail, so I don't do that -- especially because the signal/noise ratio isn't bad, and it's usually easy enough to create labels and filters. Amazon stuff goes in Amazon.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The irony is that This is True is one of the first profitable mailing lists, predating Yahoo! Mail by almost three years.
What's ironic about it?
[rhetorical question to highlight "irony" word abuse]
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
How do you notify the existing Yahoo members they need to resubscribe at another email provider?
I stopped using Yahoo about 4-5 years ago because of problems with inbox delivery. After many tests, their mail servers would respond that the message was Sent when in fact it was never delivered. I've tested it about 20-30 times since then and have the same issues. Even if you send mail from supposedly vanity domains like Gmail.com, the mail still never gets delivered. Yahoo has had problems before with the profiles.yahoo.com site getting infiltrated by spammers about 5-7 years ago, a problem they never solved. It seems like the problems don't go away -- they only get worse. This story is just one example.
It's common practice for larger email providers to treat any large movements of personal training as indicative of the nature of an email(if a bunch of people tag it as spam for themselves, it must be spam for everyone, going into dns-blacklists, etc, even if a few people tag it ham). This is a single-provider example of what people do when they report spam to spamcop, except spamcop's blacklist expands the concept to more than one provider.
Just because your personal training data is used in a personal context, it doesn't mean it cannot be used, statistically(99% of people marked this as spam, block it at the smtp level, we're wasting cpu cycles receiving this).
You should be using a filter, not the spam reporting feature for this... What people delete unread is not(yet) tracked. What's flagged has spam carries a black mark...
I run a relatively small (2,000 subscribers) email discussion list for hardware store owners. I'm signed up as a mailing list provider with AOL's mail system, and I receive notifications when subscribers submit my list messages as spam. Apparently AOL's DELETE and REPORT AS SPAM buttons are relatively close together, though I can't verify this. I do know that I get notifications from AOL that a user has reported a message as spam, and when I contact the user they tell me it was a mistake and they didn't realize they had reported the message as spam.
My guess is that you have to reach a fairly high "critical mass" of spam reports before AOL will actually take action and block list messages. I've never had my list blocked by AOL (or Yahoo for that matter) so the occasional erroneous report doesn't seem to have much effect.
I wonder if Yahoo has a similar program for mailing list admins?
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
I agree that people shouldn't mark as spam things they voluntarily signed up for (unless attempts to remove oneself from the list fail).
However, I think this also points out a way in which email could be made better. There should really be a standardized way to unsubscribe from mailing lists, so that every mail client automatically shows an "unsubscribe" button inside any mailing list email. The problem with current unsubscribe methods is that they require too much effort (even clicking a few links is "too much effort" in comparison to the "spam" button... moreover many sites make you go through numerous confusing web-forms). Also, an integrated "unsubscribe" button in an email client would send the "please unsubscribe" signal, and simultaneously add the address to a personal blacklist (but not add it to the spam detection list).
If you make it easy for people to use, then they will. The present problem arises largely from people's laziness. But you can't prevent people from being lazy, so instead the tools should adapt to people's common usage.
If the site was so bad that you only visited it once, why did you give them your friggin' email address?
They didn't just grab it out of thin air, you know. You're the one that went through their registration process and agreed to their terms of service, in which case any email they sent to you WASN'T unsolicited and WASN'T spam.
In short, you're one of the idiots who're causing all of the problems. Just click the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the email next time.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I would presume that interested subscribers (particularly paid ones) would still find a way of receiving their messages. EVERY spam filter has an exceptions list, to explicitly specify addresses that you want to receive messages from, even if the filter thinks they are spam. Yahoo's prefes might be a bit more hidden, but I'd be surprised if adding this 'blocked' mailing address to that list wouldn't let the messages through. Presuming the mailing list is linked to an actual website letting his users know to add the address to their exceptions list, it doesn't seem like this should be more than a temporary problem if his viewers are actually dedicated. Spam is a problem. Idiots incorrectly using spam filters is another one. But that's how things are, and until some spam-proof Internet 2.0 comes along, we just have to deal with spam or inaccurate filters as they stand - or change mail providers if becomes annoyng.
Tell your followers to subscribe to your opponents blogs and mailing lists
Wait for a big event
Put out your press release
Tell all of your follows to hit the "This is SPAM" button on all of the opposition blogs and mailing lists
Voila - your message goes out and the opposition is silenced for at least few days until they get their mailing lists and blogs back on line.
Statesman
You gave them their e-mail addresss. They disclose how they will use your e-mail address if you provide it.
The messages are solicited.
Unsolicited is not a codename for anything I don't want.
Unsolicited means they found you and contacted you without you directly providing them with your contact information to 'subscribe' or as part of a business transaction.
Generally, solicited messages cannot be considered spam, except under extreme circumstances.
(Where the contact information is misused to send a massive volume of messages over a short period of time, without permission, for instance)
The reason people don't use the unsubscribe link is due to trust. Do you trust a spammer? Why would you when they've demonstrated they're untrustworthy. Even if they're not a spammer, you believe they are so the thought process is the same.
You click the Spam button instead. You trust your email provider more than a spammer. That's why.
Camping on quad since 1996.
If no one is upset over its absence, then it indeed was spam. The determination of spam is based on whether you want it to continue or not. The lack of complaining subscribers suggests it wasn't.
No, that's not true: the keywords for determining spam are: solicitation and opt-in.
If you opted-in by joining something, then it is not spam, even if you don't want it, and are too ignorant to follow the opt-out directions. It becomes spam if you follow the opt-out directions, and the messages continue.
Strangely, some people actually want spam; I.E. some users complain about the new corporate spam filters, that they no longer get their "viagra ads" or "random stock tips" coming in...
In any event, if the mailing list mattered, there should eventually be some yahoo users upset they no longer get the messages.
Unfortunately, most won't have any idea that the reason they no longer get them is due to yahoo.
If they did, they would likely make efforts to switch to a competing webmail service (at least for delivery of that mailing list messages).
Effected readers would be unlikely to complaind to yahoo, because (A) large corporations are bureaucratic and make it too difficult to get a complaint like that one listened to by the right people, and (B) users don't know how to make the complaint, (C) corporations normally ignore complaints like that anyways, and (D) effected users would want an immediate resolution, which can only be obtained one way (by partially switching from yahoo to something else).
If something has single click unsubscribe then i'll happily use that.
However too many sites expect that you figure out what username and password you used to sign up and then somehow manage your subscriptions via their website.
If i cant get off a list in under 30 seconds, then i'll spam filter it in google
Well, no shit Sherlock. Isn't that the point of the whole article in the first place?
The reality that the parent pointed out is there is an easy out for Yahoo Mail subscribers (and others as well). These day's unsubscribe processes are a pain in the ass at times, and being on the receiving end of 400 different methods to "unsubscribe" your account from a mailing list isn't fun these days.
It might hurt publishers, but it is a reality.
I'll use a prime example - somehow I got signed up on Texas Instruments DSP mailing list - and to unsubscribe I have to login to an account for which I have no idea what my credentials are. So, your "fucking clicks of a mouse" got tossed out the window like the rest of your argument.
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
An unsubscribe process takes more clicks then hitting 'mark as spam'. That's all the reason people need to use the spam button.
BULLSHIT
I get This is True, I have for over a decade now, and on my latest issue there's this tidbit available from one keypress (enter) at the bottom:
Message 4,496 has information associated with it that explains how to participate in an email list. An email list is represented by a single email address that users sharing a common interest can send messages to (known as posting) which are then redistributed to all members of the list (sometimes after review by a moderator).
List participation commands in this message include:
* A method to remove yourself from the list (Unsubscribe).
Select HERE to UNsubscribe.
One more keypress and I'd be unsubscribed. In fact it's easier than reporting it as spam is. People just don't CARE. Or they're just stupid, or perhaps both.
Can you honestly say you've never done it?
Yes I can, I'm not an idiot nor am a lazy asshole. If I can't get a list to unsubscribe me I'll report it, but at that point it IS spam. (And violating the toothless CAN-SPAM act to boot.)
Just because you're lazy and/or stupid doesn't mean most of us are.
From both Yahoo and AOL users: If they don't want something, they just mark it spam, even if they signed up for it.
In fact, we have customers that pay us money every month to send them leads on their inventory, and ever month, we have a few of them (AOL users) mark legitimate inquiries as spam. And they not only asked us to send them to them, they're PAYING US to send them to them!!!
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
This is fundamentally a Human-Computer Interaction problem. Namely, the button is built to mark mail that is unsolicited advertisement, but is being used to mark any mail that is unwanted.
And it's a truism that in HCI you never blame the user. Not because it's never the user's fault, but because blaming the user is pointless. You can't change the user. You can't make him behave differently. You usually can't even educate him (they never read manuals or help or tooltips or any other form of instructions).
So yeah, you can say that it's the user's fault for using "Mark as Spam" instead of unsubscribing. But the fact is that they're doing it, and they're going to keep on doing it no matter what you say. Blaming them isn't going to fix anything. Instead, Yahoo needs to adapt to this and fix their code so that users who use "Mark as Spam" as a general "unwanted mail" button don't screw up the system.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
List-Unsubscribe: is defined in RFC 2369...
And, irony of ironies, Yahoo! Groups actually uses it in their messages.
There should really be a standardized way to unsubscribe from mailing lists, so that every mail client automatically shows an "unsubscribe" button inside any mailing list email.
There is, and This is True uses it, it's called the "List-Unsubscribe:" header.
Yes, me too. I'm shocked that there is anybody deliberately doing this. It's messing up the filters for all of us. It's clouding the problem, so that more spam can get in. I have no problems against legitimate senders.
testing out my trending skills
Because you're an ass. I've used the mark spam bit, too, but only for emails for which the unsubscribe link is neither present in the email, nor apparent on the website. In my view, if they obscure or don't even have a way for me to stop receiving emails, they become spam the moment I no longer desire to receive them.
Because I'm also an ass. Although slightly less of one.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
However, I think this also points out a way in which email could be made better. There should really be a standardized way to unsubscribe from mailing lists, so that every mail client automatically shows an "unsubscribe" button inside any mailing list email. The problem with current unsubscribe methods is that they require too much effort (even clicking a few links is "too much effort" in comparison to the "spam" button... moreover many sites make you go through numerous confusing web-forms). Also, an integrated "unsubscribe" button in an email client would send the "please unsubscribe" signal, and simultaneously add the address to a personal blacklist (but not add it to the spam detection list).
There is already a mechanism for this. It's called the List-Unsubscribe header, though only Hotmail does anything with it. The problem is a question of trust. A spammer can put in an unsubscribe link that says "Hey, this guy read my email, let's send him more crap!" Not only did you not unsubscribe, you just telegraphed the fact that the spam got to your inbox.
It is in the nature of people to seek the shortest path to gratification.
Can you honestly say you've never done it?
Remind me never to swim in any pool this guy has ever been in...
guilty. not of this particular list but of countless others
Rather than call you an inconsiderate ass like the others here, I'd point to you as an example of how IT doesn't take human nature into account when setting up systems. In this case, Yahoo was naive to think that they could depend on (L)user input to create a decent anti-spam system. AOL does the same stupid thing, BTW - even to the point where Florida's hurricane alerts were being flagged as spam.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Actually, the people being hurt are the Yahoo users. If you think for one minute people are blind sheep maybe you need spend a bit more time away from your own little world and out in the thick of it.
I know myself if my mail providers started doing this I'd be moving my clients and my gaming clan/corp/guild away from those services. In fact, I'd make an extra special effort to show people how much Yahoo services suck.
While I am dead set against spam, this is NOT the answer. False positives are a good way to lock your company out, and give your competition the upper hand. By taking the typical neo-conservative idea of "we don't negotiate with " you are burning your bridges before you cross the river. Yahoo have always played second fiddle to the likes of Hotmail, and now Gmail, so acting like this will ensure that they fall even farther behind the competition.
Nice work Yahoo, way to burn your customers.
Remember to never swim in any pool that this guy has ever been in...
While you're at it, don't stand in the street when he is about to drive by. In fact, don't stand on the sidewalk either. Just do whatever it takes to get out of the way.
testing out my trending skills
That only works if the user has a reason to overcome those obstacles. In this case, the user bears absolutely no consequences for his action, so he has absolutely no motivation to change.
If you allowed the user to drive a high-performance automobile after using his e-mail for a while, but only if he used the "Mark as Spam" button correctly, then maybe we'd see some change.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
You miss the point. The user would still recognize the difference between unsolicited email and email from a list they no longer wish to receive and click the correct button. It's a solution to the convenience problem whereby a user clicks the spam button just to make the email go away.
It's a good idea. It would be even better implemented if the List-Unsubscribe header were to be checked even when the spam button is clicked, querying the user if unsubscribing is really what they intended. The spam button doesn't need to be very convenient.
simply buy a domain renewal/transfer somewhere else and keep an eye on your e-mail, your new domain provider will contact yahoo in a way they can't ignore.
If only it were that simple. I went through the process a year ago with a domain I bought from Yahoo in 2000.
You have to close out and cancel your Yahoo domain account (counter intuitive), then deal with Melbourne IT, which is the registrar Yahoo uses. (Because Yahoo is not a registrar.)
Only, Melbourne IT will refer you to Yahoo. And Yahoo will refer you to Melbourne IT. It's a fun process that took me a month and a half for a simple domain transfer.
Never, ever, ever, on pain of death, buy a domain from Yahoo.
Yeah, but blaming them makes me feel better.
You're confusing "unsolicited" with "spam." "Spam" is a subjective term, and means different things for different people, though we generally agree that factors like unsolicited, commercial, irritating, unwanted, impersonal, "mass", and antisocial contribute to the "spam" character of email. The law tries to limit spam by prohibiting the most easily defined and clearly damaging emails (e.g. those which are clearly fraudulent).
Yahoo also tries to limit spam, but they are not a judge and are interested in a social definition of spam. Yahoo is trying to discover what people (automatically) want removed from their inbox, without feeling any obligation to contact the sender. It turns out that lots of people don't want this email, and don't feel much obligation to the sender. Fair enough-if they think it's spam, then for them it is spam. Blaming the users for seeing things differently is just arrogant*.
Yahoo made the mistake of inferring that nobody wants this email and acting accordingly. The fault is Yahoo's, not the users who marked it as spam. Yahoo's algorithm should have noticed that lots of their users did not mark it as spam, and realised that they should treat it differently to penis enlargement emails.
*Requiring users to agree to your definition of spam so that it doesn't inconvenience other people is just absurd. You are always responsible for the behaviour of your system, whatever your users do. That is a basic principle of computer security, and applies to spam inference just as much as operating system kernel design. If you provide an easily-broken system and it breaks, you suck. Yes, you can hope that your users are not entirely antisocial or uncooperative, but ultimately users is as users does.
I say we get rid of all mailing lists, and use RSS feeds.
Instant updates for all clients, anyone who doesn't want to hear about it anymore just has to delete their bookmark... and it never gets flagged as false positive.
Also, no mailing list = lots less spam.
I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
From the original article, by the owner of the list:
"It's like shooting a gun into a crowd of people, then walking away before seeing what happened."
So, marking an email as spam accidentally is "like" cold-blooded indiscriminate murder.
No, hold on a minute, I know -
it isn't!
Grow a sense of perspective, you self-important blowhard.
Because TIT is indicative of every single unsubscribe method, amirite?
Why no, it's not, in fact most of the legit mailing lists make it harder. But this is also irrelevant as the list in question here IS This is True, and its unsubscribe method is as easy (and often easier) than marking it as spam. That was the point.
As others have pointed out, it's easier to unsubscribe from all of Randy's lists than it is to subscribe to them. Subscribing requires the user to confirm that they indeed submitted their address to be subscribed, and it's always been that way.
in no way can, or even should, yahoo check if one of their millions of users at some website clicked a button to receive e-mail, or even if they pressed the accept link on the subsequent confirmation e-mail (or went to a website and clicked the confirmation link there).
Also, including unsubscribe headers into an e-mail does not make it legit, as others pointed out, this is something many spammers include too.
Either yahoo should turn up their threshold for identifying spam from the amount of users clicking "this is spam", or this guy has been the subject of a malicious attack.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Some years ago I subscribed to an IBM mailing list, just to see if anything interesting was on it. My subscribe e-mail had a link to the unsubscribe page on a server, all later e-mails didn't. That already isn't a very good way of doing it. Last month I wanted to get rid of it, searched for my first e-mail, followed the link, 404 error. By being so sloppy with their mailing list practices, there is no better way then using the "this is spam" link.
Other example: my Gmail address is apparently very equal to the ones of some philippinan users and I get many subscribe e-mails and invites to mailing list that are popular in that community. Of course I never confirm those things, but in the case of Multiply "Secure and family friendly social networking", I got not only signed up without having to confirm, I also had no way to unsubscribe, and got all of a sudden a lot of e-mail from that multiply user's friends. I had it forwarded to the spambox. Then after a while, I got the mail from the "forgot password" button, and out of curiosity found that I could indeed log in with this. These are pretty amazingly bad internet practices, I contacted the site owner and actually got a reply back, apparently they had deliberately chosen to have users be able to log in for the first few weeks without them having to confirm their e-mail address. Web 2.0: the same mistakes all over again, but with new paint.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
It's fortunately not that simple, try it and you'll see. Y! clearly is not this stupid to let anyone mark anything as spam.
For people running mail lists, sending bulk mail or whatever... they have ways to keep this from happening.
Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, etc usually provide bulk mailer feedback loops to prevent this sort of thing. When a recipient marks your mail as spam, the sender is notified so they can remove that recipient from their list.
Basically, you just unsubscribe the whiners. Works surprisingly well.
I've found that nurturing one's Zen nature is vital to dealing with technology. Violence is pretty damn useful too.